Transcoding Live TV to Android

[t^2]

I've been playing around and can stream Live TV ok. Can't say that I've figured out how to transcode Live TV though. is it possible?

The device I want to Transcode to is a Galaxy S3.

[bgowland]

I've been playing around and can stream Live TV ok. Can't say that I've figured out how to transcode Live TV though. is it possible?

The device I want to Transcode to is a Galaxy S3.

If you go to Settings in nDroid you can select various preset transcode profiles.

Cheers,
Brian

[t^2]

If you go to Settings in nDroid you can select various preset transcode profiles.

Cheers,
Brian

When I select any setting for transcoding Live TV, and select watch on a channel, I can see the tuner get allocated in NVPR's Device Status window. Then maybe 10 seconds later it goes away. Nothing happens on my Galaxy S3. MXPlayer just sits there with a spinning circle until I back out of it.

If I leave transcoding set to off in nDroid, then Live TV plays fine on my GS3 in MXPlayer. Do I need to change the transcode paramters in the NVPR config.xml file to true for this to work?

[t^2]

W Do I need to change the transcode paramters in the NVPR config.xml file to true for this to work?

Well if you do... In my case it made no difference. I toggled <AllowRemoteTranscode>false</AllowRemoteTranscode> from false to true and restarted the service. Results remain the same. No transcoding.

[bgowland]

Hmmm, I'm not sure what the problem is. Watching Live TV (transcoded or not) connects directly to the npvr web server. If transcoding is disabled in nDroid, it uses a URL along the lines of...

Code:

http://<server>:<port>/live?...

... with associated channel number.

If transcoding is enabled in nDroid, it uses something like...

Code:

http://<server>:<port>/transcode?...

...with channel number and transcode parameters (XY resolution and bitrate).

If it's not working then try some of the different presets (some don't work successfully for me). If that doesn't help then post the npvr log files after a failed attempt.

EDIT: I'm not sure what the <AllowRemoteTranscode> setting does but I'm fairly sure it wouldn't apply to streaming over a LAN or WLAN and probably doesn't apply in this case.

Cheers,
Brian

[t^2]

Hmmm, I'm not sure what the problem is. Watching Live TV (transcoded or not) connects directly to the npvr web server. If transcoding is disabled in nDroid, it uses a URL along the lines of...

Code:

http://<server>:<port>/live?...

... with associated channel number.

If transcoding is enabled in nDroid, it uses something like...

Code:

http://<server>:<port>/transcode?...

...with channel number and transcode parameters (XY resolution and bitrate).

If it's not working then try some of the different presets (some don't work successfully for me). If that doesn't help then post the npvr log files after a failed attempt.

EDIT: I'm not sure what the <AllowRemoteTranscode> setting does but I'm fairly sure it wouldn't apply to streaming over a LAN or WLAN and probably doesn't apply in this case.

Cheers,
Brian

Ok... I gave various presets a try (assuming you're referring to the different speeds selectable in the enable transcode options). Nothing seems to be working.

Here are my logs...

[bgowland]

From your logs it looks like npvr is doing what it should and is creating the transcoded buffer file but the player on your Android device is deciding it doesn't know how to handle it so terminating the connection at which point npvr stops the transcoding.

I'll need to look at this closer. I'm currently rewriting all of the code for watching live tv / recordings / videos and should be able to test it later today.

[t^2]

Ya... MXPlayer will just hang (perpetual spinning circle). If I stop the NVPR service, MXPlayer will give me an error message telling me it couldn't open this video file and then back out on its own.

So what's this line telling me (just curious):

Seems stream 0 codec frame rate differs from container frame rate: 119.88 (120000/1001) -> 59.94 (60000/1001

Some kind of frame rate mismatch (120 vs 60) between the codec and the container (TS?)?

[bgowland]

Ya... MXPlayer will just hang (perpetual spinning circle). If I stop the NVPR service, MXPlayer will give me an error message telling me it couldn't open this video file and then back out on its own.

I did an analysis of what MX Player does with Wireshark a while back.

It attempts to get the duration of a media file by requesting a chunk from the beginning, finding out the file size then requesting a chunk from near the end. It then tries to use that to be able to display the correct duration on its OSD (progress bar) and to allow accurate seeking etc. This is fine for fixed length files (recordings etc) but I seem to remember for live tv (original format or transcoded) sub wrote the web server to report a "very large" file size bearing in mind the buffer file(s) are ongoing.

I know when I first started using MX Player it would fail-back if it couldn't determine duration and simply show 00:00 for duration but was happy to playback the buffer. I don't know if they've changed something or if there's a setting in MX Player which can be tweaked. Unfortunately I lost my TV antenna feed recently so can't test immediately. I will be rigging a new feed soon though.

So what's this line telling me (just curious)

To be honest I don't know - I think ffmpeg does some pre-processing to work out what streams (AV) to use and that's a warning that it has found an anomaly - not sure if it's critical or not.

Cheers,
Brian

[t^2]

I've tried a handful of different players. All seem to react the same. So is there a player that will work that you know of?